Expert R users, what's in your .Rprofile? [clo

Question

I have always found startup profile files of other people both useful and instructive about the language. Moreover, while I have some customization for Bash and Vim, I have nothing for R.

For example, one thing I always wanted is different colors for input and output text in a window terminal, and maybe even syntax highlighting.

Answer 1

Make data.frames display somewhat like 'head', only without having to type 'head'

print.data.frame <- function(df) {
   if (nrow(df) > 10) {
      base::print.data.frame(head(df, 5))
      cat("----\n")
      base::print.data.frame(tail(df, 5))
   } else {
      base::print.data.frame(df)
   }
}

(From How to make 'head' be applied automatically to output? )

Answer 2

Here's mine, including some of the mentioned ideas.

Two things you might want to look at:

• .set.width() / w() update your print width to the one of the terminal. Unfortunately I did not find a way to do this automatically on terminal resize - R documentation mentions this is done by some R interpreters.
• history is saved every time together with a timestamp and the working directory

.

.set.width <- function() {
  cols <- as.integer(Sys.getenv("COLUMNS"))
  if (is.na(cols) || cols > 10000 || cols < 10)
    options(width=100)
  options(width=cols)
}

.First <- function() {
  options(digits.secs=3)              # show sub-second time stamps
  options(max.print=1000)             # do not print more than 1000 lines
  options("report" = c(CRAN="http://cran.at.r-project.org"))
  options(prompt="R> ", digits=4, show.signif.stars=FALSE)
}

# aliases
w <- .set.width

.Last <- function() {
  if (!any(commandArgs()=='--no-readline') && interactive()){
    timestamp(,prefix=paste("##------ [",getwd(),"] ",sep=""))
    try(savehistory("~/.Rhistory"))
   }
}

Answer 3

I use the following to get cacheSweave (or pgfSweave) to work with the "Compile PDF" button in RStudio:

library(cacheSweave)
assignInNamespace("RweaveLatex", cacheSweave::cacheSweaveDriver, "utils")

Answer 4

I have an environment variable R_USER_WORKSPACE which points to the top directory of my packages. In .Rprofile I define a function devlib which sets the working directory (so that data() works) and sources all .R files in the R subdirectory. It is quite similar to Hadley's l() function above.

devlib <- function(pkg) {
  setwd(file.path(Sys.getenv("R_USER_WORKSPACE", "."), deparse(substitute(pkg)), "dev"))
  sapply(list.files("R", pattern=".r$", ignore.case=TRUE, full.names=TRUE), source)
  invisible(NULL)
}

.First <- function() {
  setwd(Sys.getenv("R_USER_WORKSPACE", "."))
  options("repos" = c(CRAN = "http://mirrors.softliste.de/cran/", CRANextra="http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin"))
}

.Last <- function() update.packages(ask="graphics")

Answer 5

I often have a chain of debug calls I need to call and uncommenting them can be very tedious. With the help of the SO community, I went for the following solution and inserted this into my .Rprofile.site. # BROWSER is there for my Eclipse Tasks so that I have an overview of browser calls in the Task View window.

# turn debugging on or off
# place "browser(expr = isTRUE(getOption("debug"))) # BROWSER" in your function
# and turn debugging on or off by bugon() or bugoff()
bugon <- function() options("debug" = TRUE)
bugoff <- function() options("debug" = FALSE) #pun intended

Answer 6

Here are mine:

.First <- function () {
  options(device="quartz")
}

.Last <- function () {
  if (!any(commandArgs() == '--no-readline') && interactive()) {
    require(utils)
    try(savehistory(Sys.getenv("R_HISTFILE")))
  }
}

# Slightly more flexible than as.Date
# my.as.Date("2009-01-01") == my.as.Date(2009, 1, 1) == as.Date("2009-01-01")
my.as.Date <- function (a, b=NULL, c=NULL, ...) {
  if (class(a) != "character")
    return (as.Date(sprintf("%d-%02d-%02d", a, b, c)))
  else
    return (as.Date(a))
}

# Some useful aliases
cd <- setwd
pwd <- getwd
lss <- dir
asd <- my.as.Date # examples: asd("2009-01-01") == asd(2009, 1, 1) == as.Date("2009-01-01")
last <- function (x, n=1, ...) tail(x, n=n, ...)

# Set proxy for all web requests
Sys.setenv(http_proxy="http://192.168.0.200:80/")

# Search RPATH for file <fn>.  If found, return full path to it
search.path <- function(fn,
     paths = strsplit(chartr("\\", "/", Sys.getenv("RPATH")), split =
                switch(.Platform$OS.type, windows = ";", ":"))[[1]]) {
  for(d in paths)
     if (file.exists(f <- file.path(d, fn)))
        return(f)
  return(NULL)
}

# If loading in an environment that doesn't respect my RPATH environment
# variable, set it here
if (Sys.getenv("RPATH") == "") {
  Sys.setenv(RPATH=file.path(path.expand("~"), "Library", "R", "source"))
}

# Load commonly used functions
if (interactive())
  source(search.path("afazio.r"))

# If no R_HISTFILE environment variable, set default
if (Sys.getenv("R_HISTFILE") == "") {
  Sys.setenv(R_HISTFILE=file.path("~", ".Rhistory"))
}

# Override q() to not save by default.
# Same as saying q("no")
q <- function (save="no", ...) {
  quit(save=save, ...)
}

# ---------- My Environments ----------
#
# Rather than starting R from within different directories, I prefer to
# switch my "environment" easily with these functions.  An "environment" is
# simply a directory that contains analysis of a particular topic.
# Example usage:
# > load.env("markets")  # Load US equity markets analysis environment
# > # ... edit some .r files in my environment
# > reload()             # Re-source .r/.R files in my environment
#
# On next startup of R, I will automatically be placed into the last
# environment I entered

# My current environment
.curr.env = NULL

# File contains name of the last environment I entered
.last.env.file = file.path(path.expand("~"), ".Rlastenv")

# Parent directory where all of my "environment"s are contained
.parent.env.dir = file.path(path.expand("~"), "Analysis")

# Create parent directory if it doesn't already exist
if (!file.exists(.parent.env.dir))
  dir.create(.parent.env.dir)

load.env <- function (string, save=TRUE) {
  # Load all .r/.R files in <.parent.env.dir>/<string>/
  cd(file.path(.parent.env.dir, string))
  for (file in lss()) {
    if (substr(file, nchar(file)-1, nchar(file)+1) %in% c(".r", ".R"))
      source(file)
  }
  .curr.env <<- string
  # Save current environment name to file
  if (save == TRUE) writeLines(.curr.env, .last.env.file)
  # Let user know environment switch was successful
  print (paste(" -- in ", string, " environment -- "))
}

# "reload" current environment.
reload <- resource <- function () {
  if (!is.null(.curr.env))
    load.env(.curr.env, save=FALSE)
  else
    print (" -- not in environment -- ")
}

# On startup, go straight to the environment I was last working in
if (interactive() && file.exists(.last.env.file)) {
  load.env(readLines(.last.env.file))
}